PCU

Red = Spoilers 

What’s it about? Preppy pre-freshman Tom Lawrence is visiting Port Chester University to see if he wants to go there. Admissions has scheduled for him to be shown around the campus by James Andrews, known as Droz by his house members. What Tom doesn’t know is that Droz doesn’t know he was signed up to show Tom around because it was a prank by Droz’s housemate Mullaney. After realizing that Tom has an entirely distorted view of college life, Droz decides to take Tom out for a tour and show him the people on the campus. They wind up at a protest of “The Causeheads” who are protesting the cafeteria serving red meat. So Droz and the others break in and throw hundreds of pounds of uncooked meat out the window on top of the protesters. Tom is coincidentally blamed for the prank and begins to be chased all over campus. Then, through a series of unfortunate coincidences, he manages to anger several other groups of students until he is being chased by a large amount of the entire student body. After being chased all over campus, he runs into a door, and is knocked unconscious, where he is subsequently woken up inside a room surrounded by people who look suspiciously like him. They tell him they are part of a secret fraternity called “Balls and Shaft” that was forced underground when fraternities were outlawed in the 60s. Their leader, Rand McPherson, is secretly working with the campus president Ms. Garcia-Thompson to get the members of The Pit expelled so that Balls and Shaft can take their house back. Garcia-Thompson goes to The Pit with their damage bill for the semester of over $7000 and tells them that if they don’t pay it before housing forms are due for the next semester, they’ll be evicted. The Pit, in turn, tries to throw an all-campus party to raise the funds to cover the damages. But thanks to Gutter’s incompetence and the Daves laziness, there’s no beer, and no flyers, so nobody shows up and there’s nothing to drink. Droz takes control and sends Mullaney to get on the college radio and get the message out there’s going to be a party. Then he takes the Daves with him to steal various amounts of alcohol. He tells Katy that because she’s a freshman, it’s her job to find 2000 people. Gutter accidentally brings George Clinton back to The Pit with him without knowing who he is, and Droz gets him to play the party. And Tom meets Katy at the bus station and leads everyone that was chasing him back to The Pit where Droz tells them that there’s a party going on and that George Clinton is warming up on the main stage. After an amazing party and concert, Ms. Garcia-Thompson bursts into The Pit and shuts the party down, telling them that they’re being expelled, despite having raised enough money to pay their damage bill. The next day, at the bicentennial ceremony, Ms. Garcia-Thompson has plans to change the school mascot from an offensive Indian to an endangered specie. The Port-Chester Whooping Crane. Droz and Gutter dress up as the men carrying the whooping crane up to the stage while Garcia-Thompson is giving her speech and let it out of its cage, making her chase after it, giving Droz access to the microphone. He then makes a speech to the rest of the students about the party that they had and how they all got along and begins the chant of “we’re not gonna protest”, which Tom stands up and begins to chant along with further making other students chant along, until it becomes a full-on protest. Rand McPherson then goes on a racist, sexist, and homophobic rant against all the other students while Droz is holding the microphone under his arm, unbeknownst to Rand. Later on, Tom is riding the bus home when he sees Rand being chased through campus just like he was earlier in the movie and laughs about it.  

What’s good? It’s a funny, quirky comedy with a satirical spin of how politically correct the social atmosphere had gotten in the 90s. Plus it reminds you of all those college movies from the 80s where the Dean was always putting fraternities on probation for stuff.  

What’s bad? It’s not the greatest production value. In the meat tossing scene, they’re clearly shooting it out of some sort of machine, because no group of people could throw that much meat, that far. It was literally SHOOTING out of the window. 

The acting? I’m gonna have to go with mid-range. Not bad, not great. This was when David Spade was on SNL with the whole “bad boys” crew. Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and Rob Schnieder. So, he was well known at the time. Jeremy Piven does a really good job, I think. It started off his career of leading roles.  

The effects? I’ve seen better. It’s not like it’s some sort of action movie or anything, so they’re not making cars explode. But for what little practical effects there are, it’s not exactly wizardry.  

Pre-frosh. I’ve never heard the term “pre-frosh” before this movie. This is literally the first time I’ve heard this phrase. But apparently, it’s a thing. I looked it up, and apparently, people have been using it all over the place. So, I guess it’s my fault for not being in the loop… 

The Pit’s house picture degrades over time. The Pit’s house picture is very formal and upstanding at first and then by the 60s you can see they are the counterculture type, and you can see the divergent path the house is starting to take. Until by the time Tom gets there, it’s just a polaroid taped to the wall in the laziest way possible. 

Did they just start playing hockey with a lit cigarette? There was a lit cigarette in the ashtray that the Daves were playing hockey with. That means one of two things: either they were smoking and for no reason they got up and decided to start playing hockey, or they were playing hockey, and one of them lit a cigarette… 

It looks like people are just putting flyers over flyers. In the hallway leading up to Droz’s room, it looks like there’s graffiti covering other graffiti and flyers stapled over other flyers like it’s just some land of the lost that people come and do whatever they want to. 

How did he fall asleep with a cigarette in his mouth? I don’t know how you fall asleep with a cigarette in your mouth, but you’ve only got about a second before it either falls into your mouth or falls next to you and sets you on fire. So, that’s a total suspension of disbelief right there… 

That fishbowl full of cigarette butts must smell awful. I’ve had large ashtrays full of cigarette butts before, and I can tell you from experience, the smell is not great. So, a fishbowl full of cigarette butts must smell up the whole room. If it’s not constantly burning because of lit cigarettes being tossed on top of the pile… 

You’re supposed to wear the shirt of the band you’re gonna go see. Why wouldn’t Gutter wear the shirt of the band he’s gonna go see? That’s why they make the shirts. To be contrarian just to be contrarian is so useless. Nobody knows you’re doing it. Wear the shirt. Show you like the band. Give them some support.  

Why do they call him Pigman? They never explain why they call him Pigman. That’s a pretty weird nickname. How do you catch a name like that? There’s gotta be a backstory to it. If he’s just sitting there watching tv 24 hours a day, that probably has something to do with it. But the movie’s over, so we’ll never know… 

You participated in a phallus naming? She says it like it’s in the house’s bylaws. Like naming a phallus could get Sam ejected from the Womenysts. Maybe it is in the bylaws. It does seem like something they would do.  

The Causehead had the wrong sign and had to flip it over. The Causehead was chanting for “red meat” but was carrying the sign for “nuclear war”. Fortunately, all he had to do was flip the sign over and the “red meat” sign was already printed on the back because they change causes so frequently… 

Such a waste of meat. They threw like 100 lbs. of meat out of the window on to that protest. That’s such a waste of meat. I mean, I’m not even a protester, but seriously, all those animals really did die for nothing… 

Garcia-Thompson correlates “republican” with “conniving” and “evil”. This just goes to show that even back in 1994 republicans had the reputation of being slimy and manipulative. It’s not like it’s a new thing. It’s just gotten worse over the last 30 years and come to a head.  

Why is every computer plugged into one plug? Why would every computer in the room be plugged into ONE single plug that could EASILY be tripped over. It looked like the plug was like, right in the middle of the walkway, too. You’d think it would be strapped down or something. Or at least there would be multiple plugs so something like that wouldn’t happen. Computer labs think of things like that, so catastrophes of that nature don’t happen. 

I don’t think they would go anyway. Garcia-Thompson said the Pit Members already qualified for a sensitivity training weekend. I don’t think they would go if she tried to assign it to them anyway. 

A dark room full of stoners. Jerrytown is exactly what a house like that would look like. A dark room full of stoned people with tye-dye shirts and Grateful Dead music playing. 

Rand takes a step backwards. When Rand and B.D. enter the Balls and Shaft frat, Rand steps down into the room, sees B.D. is taller than him, and then takes a step backwards onto the steps so that he is taller than B.D… 

Moonbeam steals their hammer. When Moonbeam stops the Daves from nailing the flyers into the tree, she steals their hammer and subtly puts it down into her belt before walking away with it. And the Daves don’t even notice. 

The Daves give up very easily. The Daves don’t think twice about giving up. Moonbeam makes them stop, and that’s that. 

The freshman scene must’ve hurt. When Droz jumps up on his dresser and falls on his desk and crashes all over, you can see him wiping the glass off of his back and everything. Jeremy Piven did that scene himself. That probably hurt. A lot… 

Why did the black power group start chasing Tom anyway? Tom never really did anything to the black power group. They just kinda started chasing him because the other people were chasing him. That’s really kind of racist from them when you think about it… 

Is the dog allowed on the team? Is the dog even allowed on Jerrytown’s frisbee team? He seems like a ringer to me. They brought him in when they were down by 14 points.  

Droz doesn’t care Raj and Deej might be dead. It’s more important to Droz that there’s no beer than it is that Raj and Deej might be dead and laying over on the other side of the room. 

The foreign exchange students. The foreign exchange students that Katy found are all in their native clothes for some reason. Even though they’re in America, in an American college, on a Friday night. 

The Womenysts are very easily led away. Ceel very easily changes the Womenyst’s chant to kumbuya and leads them away from the front of the house. It doesn’t seem like it was very hard. 

The irony of chanting “we’re not gonna protest.” It was good writing at the end of the script for the students to be chanting “we’re not gonna protest” to have Garcia-Thompson lose control of the students and get fired for it. The irony of protesting protesting by not protesting is really up there on the irony chart.  

It was Sam’s car they wrecked. It turns out it was Samantha’s car that Droz and the Daves wrecked getting all the booze to the party the night before, not Rand’s. And he’s gonna have to explain that to her soon enough. But that’s another story… 

So, yeah. Go and see PCU. It’s been ranked among the 10 best college movies by The Huffington Post. I remember seeing it for the first time on Comedy Central when I was young, and it became one of my favorite movies ever since. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…